109 2r 1a i meant

It would be really nice to see a $20, $30, or $50 rebuy that got a decent prizepool, putting a little more effort into rebuys even though they aren't your bread and butter would be great. Also I know this will probably be an unpopular suggestion but there is nothing during the week that runs between $215 and $1,000 on stars other than the $320 6 max daily which is not a tourney that you guys use to attract a ton of players. I think you could make the Super Tuesday and the Thrill a lot better tourneys these days by getting a lot more players in them through satties and even considering lowering the buy-in to something in the $600 range to make these much bigger tourneys. I think you would find a lot more players trying to satty into these in that case and more people directly buying in as well without lowering the prizepool at all. I think if you did something like that you could add a weekly 2k probably on Saturday that was a 2 Day event and consider even making the Sunday $500 a 1k because the weekend seems to be the best time to have highstakes tourneys. I don't see the numbers dropping much as a lot of people will still play it and it's not a tourney tons of people are trying to satty into anyway with a busy Sunday schedule.

4k add on 55r big antes 100 percent

The 13.5 and 27 have a high % of recreational players and are fine as is. The 54 and 265 have a very low %. The suggestion is that the % of recreational players will very likely go up if they are made into PSKO's

I suspect the thrill would do better as a 500.

This is such a strange thing to say. The % of recreational players would go up in any MTT that randomly got changed to a PSKO. Everyone is aware of this. But there are plenty at all buy-ins scattered all throughout the day now. There is no point changing tournaments that are doing well in the schedule to PSKO, especially when those tournaments themselves are something different to play.

You may as well say hey Sunday Million could get more if you made it PSKO. That's not really the point though.

doubt sunday milly would. and i really dont get all the ppl saying leave the regfest be a regfest. dont you guys like making some money once in a while? if you recall, the big 75 used to be a sheetty 75$ 5k bs bowl. WHO WANTS THAT ONE BACK???

If the mil got significantly more recreational players as a PSKO I would be all for it. I don't think anyone ITT is advocating more PSKO's just for the sake of having more PSKO's in the schedule. The higher rake in them really sucks imo.

Blakkman summed it up in the post above mine

What about leveling 1st/2nd price in PSKOs and leaving only the bounty left to play for #1? Did anyone comment to that?

really enjoyed that one, never played 22 AH before so can't compare but the format is fun and probably what most fishes wanna see.

I agree that there are quite enough PSKO in the 10-44$ range but there is still only one 82$ and one 109$ but not a single one with 109$+ except the Thursday thrill. You should add some in the 109$-320$ buy-in range.

Sometimes it's nice to play stuff without gigantic fields.

Luke,

Yesterday's weather (Monday, evening, boring):
- Toronto, Canada — 18С, Cloudly, No Rains;
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — 26С, Sunny;
- Sidney, Australia — 25С, Sunny.

Now look at:
- 22:15 ET $2.75 Deep Stacks. It has $750 gtd and has $1100 prize pool today.
- 22:45 ET $4.40 8-max. It has $500 gtd and has $920 prize pool today.

If you increase the guarantees up to $1000 and $750 accordingly and it will be raining on the Western Hemisphere I bet this MTTs will be significantly bigger than it is right now.

Cliffs: dont be scary on raising gtds even in summer.

agree.

too many 20+20, 10+10, 11+11 PSKOs but just one 50+50 and one 500+500.

i also think there are plenty of players like me that are waiting in the shadow wanting to play 30r/50r, a nice structured tourney that doesnt have 1k field size and is not a turbo. but we can't jump in those having a 100+ABI given the new rebuy period and play for 2-3k up top with all the regs

Luke, you should try the guarantee boost that you tried the last Sunday for the 50r during weekdays. ppl dont wanna jump in 10k gtd on a Sunday, but they will def play it on weekdays.

instead of letting the 30r and 50r slowly die, you can at least try something like ACR did with the progressive guarantee promotions, or just turn the 30r into a 100psko regspeed and the 50r into a 150-250psko reg speed.

personally, i invest 100$ in a 10k gtd on FTP, even the field is tough but at least i get to pracctice a bit and also have a shot at winning 30-40buyins back. i skip 50r because i invest 150-300$ in a tough field but i get 15, 20buyins tops if i win, and to be realistic, you cant really have a high roi in that, so i go elsewhere to invest less money and have a bit bigger reward.
and the saddest thing is that my first option on the site after BIGs is the 109PSKO turbo

there are more tiers of players that you can attract to play the 30r/50r:

-the high ABI regs that play the bigs/ST/Thrill/320 6m + turbos skip those because of the low prizepool ( i noticed that they flick in 27KO turbo for example instead of the 50r because its not worth bothering with that )

-ppl like myself who just play 3 bigs a day and just waiting to invest $ in a non turbo tournament

-recs

you can gather all tiers of players in those tourneys if you want to

Low Variance stuff is nice,

I still think a Low stake reg speed PSKO would be a good value around 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM Slot , like a 11 or 16.5 PSKO.

How'd the 50r do on Sunday?

Holy ****! the $5.50 2r1a at 23:00 CET with the new stucture, antes from start and first 4 levels are 20min, then it goes back to 10 minutes, LOVE IT! Really hope the person who decided to get this structure up there reads this, i'm soooo happy and everyone i talked with loves it. sosososoo goood! people talk about "playing poker, not bingo" CHECK, people talk about doing something about rebuys, CHECK, antes from first level and also really long levels at the start will create a huge prizepool!


PLS more tournies with this structure!!

EDIT; 4k add on thooo <3

Micromillions... Stars, please work to get rid of the lag!!

I have come up with a proposed schedule to improve the peak time micro stakes regular speed schedule. Here is the current regular speed MTTs at buyin $5.50 and below at the peak hours on PokerStars, along with my proposed improvements.

PROPOSED REGULAR SPEED MICRO SCHEDULE
(All times below are BST/WET, or ET+5)

4.45pm $5.50 Freezeout ($2K)
5.00pm $3.30 Freezeout ($3K)
5.30pm $1.10 6-max ($1.5K)
6.00pm $4.40 PSKO ($15K)
6.15pm $2.20 Freezeout (GTD) - NEW TOURNAMENT
6.30pm $3.30 6-max ($2K) - NEW TIME (moved from 6.45pm)
6.45pm $5.50 Freezeout (deep) ($2.5K) - NEW TIME (moved from 6.30pm)
7.00pm $11.00 BIG $11 - for time reference purposes
7.00pm $3.30 PSKO ($12.5K)
7.15pm $3.30 Freezeout ($2.5K) - NEW TIME (moved from 7pm)
7.30pm $2.20 6-max ($2K)
8.00pm $1.10 PSKO (GTD) - NEW TOURNAMENT
8.15pm $1.10 Freezeout (GTD) - NEW TOURNAMENT
8.30pm $1.10 6-max (GTD) - NEW TOURNAMENT
8.45pm $5.50 Freezeout ($2K)
9.00pm $2.20 PSKO ($10K)
9.15pm $2.20 Freezeout ($2K)
9.15pm $2.75 Freezeout (deep) ($1.5K)

MY REASONING:
* Move $5.50 (6.30pm) deepstack 15 minutes later to give a whole hour from $11 deepstack.
* Move $3.30 (6.45pm) 6-max 15 minutes earlier to move away from later $3 buyins and to space out all the 6-max MTTs by exactly 1 hour.
* Move $3.30 (7pm) freezeout 15 minutes later to move away from 7pm cluster and more evenly space out regular freezeouts.
* Add $2.20 (6.15pm) freezeout as a good filler betweem 5pm and 7.15pm freezeouts, and to make up for the $5.50 (4K GTD) that you removed from 6pm!
* Add $1.10 regular speed PSKO at 8pm, giving a micro PSKO every hour at peak time.
* Add $1.10 regular speed freezeout at 8.15pm as there are none anywhere around this time.
* Add $1.10 regular speed 6-max at 8.30pm so you always have a micro 6-max to register every hour at peak time.

SUMMARY
* Provide a regular speed 6-max every hour at peak time.
* Provide a regular speed PSKO every hour at peak time.
* Provide a regular speed freezeout every hour at peak time.
* Fill the micro stakes regular speed void around the time of the BIG $55.

Thanks for your time

+1 huge improvement, I really hope you fix these changes and bigger addons on all q/cubes/rebuys!

Hi all,

PSA that I will be out of office all next week on holiday. I’ll be reading this thread and I’ll escalate any emergencies, though support@ is always your best bet.

There is no evidence that people want to satellite into these tournaments early in the week. Every tournament with satellites that run all week will show that players prefer to qualify on the day of the tournament. We don’t get much bang for our buck if we were to have Sunday 500 satellites all week long.

To a lesser degree, the Phase is another example of players waiting until the final day to play.

Yes. Most of what I’ve done with satellites thus far is adjusting seat guarantees. I prefer offering satellites with multiple seats guaranteed to those offering just one. I do not think recreational players want to feel like they have to win a tournament to qualify.

I never said things are running optimally. I disagreed with the premise that different satellite formats could generate 50 more seats in a period of low traffic.

Not that this is specific to this argument, but ‘seats awarded’ is not the same as ‘players qualified’!

How do you all feel about players being required to play their first seat won?

This has been done incrementally in other tournaments. For instance, the Sunday Storm satellites have adjusted guarantees on the day of the event. See the reply to Mash above.

Again, I have the same response to this as I do to the $320 having 50 more players per week. There is nearly no chance that there is this much demand not being met.

Lastly, I would caution players that mentioning 3x/2x-turbos as a large part of an optimal satellite offering is a bit suspect. These formats (well, specifically 3x-turbos) offer an enormous advantage to regular players with large bankrolls. I do not believe suggesting them as a large part of any satellite offering is necessarily amenable to the health of the target tournaments.

No, in the Americas, where 60% of the players in that tournament come from. To be fair, I’d be trolling me too.

Didn’t we have this discussion a few weeks ago?

Done.

You’re welcome!

Bold is my emphasis. The issue here is that the more satellites we run to a target, the more diluted the pool of players who want to play the target. My solution, in most instances, is to have less satellites during the week and satellites with larger guarantees closer to the target. I believe this best satisfies recreational player demand. If they see a satellite awarding multiple seats, they are more likely to register. Once we implement a system where satellites can run during late registration without being confusing or looking unusual, we’ll essentially lengthen “peak satellite time” and give them more chances to win a seat.

It used to start at 10/20/0 with potential 7.5K starting stacks. Now the early levels are more consequential. I do apologize but colluding to end a tournament happens far more often than you think!

Another consideration is the bubble effect. Even if there is no collusion, if a player busts in 3rd place at the beginning of the tournament, the system will cap the tournament such that it will never pay three players. There is a development item to fix this issue.

It isn’t changing back!

I suggest you go play our Big $109. It is one of our flagship daily tournaments and has $80K guaranteed daily!

You sure can. Done!

Nice timing on this as I deployed the VIP tournaments yesterday. Done!

The Phase is a good spot. I’ll consider the Storm.

There sure is. Go play the Phase!

This would require development and would more likely be a ring game format than a tournament. I’ll pass along the suggestion, thanks!



Yes, it had significant overlay two weeks in a row and was lowered beginning 14 June.

Yes, this tournament is struggling. We also "lost" a Phase 1 due to the server restart. I introduced the SnGs once that development was finished, but I knew they wouldn’t fire often. I simply wanted to remind players that the tournament still exists.

Does anyone have suggestions? I am considering shuffling the Phase 1s around and adding one or two more daily.

Currently, the Phase 1s run at 05:25, 10:25, 13:25, 16:25, and 19:25 (turbo). What about 05:25, 09:25 (turbo), 12:25, 15:25, 18:25 (turbo), 21:25 (turbo)?

Traffic was up across the board for main schedule guaranteed tournaments, not just the tournaments with Sunday increases. A few of these tournaments received an additional increase for this week.

Updated!

More happy players how is that bad?

If you think the same amount of recreational players would play no matter what, you’re implying that they do not have a preference for what type of poker they play. I don’t think this is the case!

As far as PSKO specifically, it is fairly obvious, to me at least, that in instances of non-branded tournaments, PSKO is far more popular than vanilla freezeouts. There is no agenda to change everything to PSKO. I think most would agree changing the Eliminator was a net positive!

I’ve looked into this and made another adjustment. It just takes a bit of time to see how long the final Phase 1 will take to run now that it has changed to 10% moving on. Appreciate you bringing it to my attention as it is not obvious to me when this happens!

It would require development but I think it sounds interesting. As an aside, I have always been surprised that PKO is as successful as it is. It seems moderately complicated.

I agree with the sentiment that the Thrill could possibly do better as a $530 in terms of prize pool. This is one of those instances where I think it is safe to say that other priorities will take precedence over a massive change like this; however, I’ll give it some thought for the future.

We’re still planning to test this in 90 player PKO SnGs.

I agree with this! A bit of added flavour during peak time…

It had a $13K prize pool. Participation was up.

Glad you guys like this! I wanted to give 2R1A an unusual but fun structure in an attempt to encourage people to play them.

If you’re still dealing with lag, please visit the following:

PokerStars Software Improvement Thread.

Keith will do what he can to help you out.

Think youre doing a great job so far

Feedback is excellent too. Wise move (for once by stars to get an ex player in to do this.


Actually, in fact that was our idea!

Thanks for all the effort here! I'll look at these in more detail after holiday. Feel free to hassle me about this later on. I do believe micro-stakes players are somewhat under-served in our current offering.

I'm assuming the sub-$1.00 tournaments aren't listed because they're turbo? For what it's worth, I am of the opinion that 'regular speed' can have a wide range. For instance, a $1.10 regular speed should likely have 8-10-12 minute levels, whereas a $109 with a smaller field might have 10-12-15-20. Different player types have different expectations!

I wouldn't be opposed to some micro tournaments having levels that last longer actually. But would prefer to see them earlier in the schedule so they don't last long into the night.

I'd be fine with this, though I'd prefer to see the first seat won paid out as a ticket rather than being locked into registration from the start. This would achieve the aim of discouraging satelite players who have no intention of ever playing the target, whilst still allowing some flexibility to players who might win a seat in advance then later discover they can't play the target from the start this week.

If that sounds like a very specific situation that won't occur very often, I can assure you that from my own point of view I play most days but whenever I'm locked into playing a particular tournament in advance you can bet your life I'll either be invaded by family visitors or one of my idiot friends will get married that day. If I know that I'll still be free to either late reg it or play next week instead, I'll be more inclined to play the satelites.